Coke and Unilever switch to social media
Tectonic shifts are taking place in the advertising world. A decade ago big FMCG companies like Coca-Cola began the practice of setting up campaign micro websites as a source of information, offers, competitions, etc., and using conventional advertising to drive traffic.
What was oh-so-cool then now looks dated. Both Coke and Unilever say they are moving away from creating their own campaign platforms in favour of using existing communities such as Facebook and YouTube. They say it makes more sense to go to where their consumers already are, rather than dragging them to their own sites.
According to New Media Age Coca-Cola plans to position its official Facebook and YouTube pages as the lead online channels for upcoming international activity for its Coke Zero and Fanta brands.
This could be an issue for creative agencies, who have done well out of the demand for campaign websites. In practice, most expect that their expertise will still be needed, although figuring out how to engage with their customers in their customers’ own space involves extra layers of complexity. These are the sorts of challenges that marketers increasingly face, and it will be interesting to see what solutions they come up with.
